REVIEW: Within the first few minutes, with grim visuals of how Dagar (Bobby Deol), a mercenary hired by families, panchayats and the powerful pockets of the community, eliminates lovers who’ve married outside of their caste, religion and so on. They supposedly have legal protection but that hardly comes in handy.
The topic being explored hangs on the nose – how and why, even in the current time, khap panchayats and families resort to honour killings in states like Haryana where this film is set.
Jyoti (Sanya Malhotra) elopes with the help of a college professor to marry Ahmed/Ashu (Vikrant Massey). She is a chartered accountant, who belongs to a politician’s family. He runs his family’s kasaikhana by the day and is a police mole involved with an illegal trade outfit in the night. His father is serving a jail sentence for an alleged arms-related crime. The difference in their worlds is clear.
Aware that Jyoti’s grandmother could resort to extreme measures, the couple seeks refuge in a government safe house which visually paints a sorry picture of institutions meant to provide protection to couples like Jyoti and Ashu. Jyoti’s grandmother hires the community’s favoured mercenary Dagar to get hold of her granddaughter and eliminate the man she is in love with. Whether or not Jyoti and Ashu get hunted by the hitman forms the rest of the narrative.
On the plus side, Sanya, Vikrant and Bobby put out honest performances. And so does the supporting cast including Raj Arjun who plays a cop who has also helplessly suffered the outcome of honour killings. You find them in touch with the insides of the characters they play at all times. Sanya and Vikrant ably display the emotions their characters experience when they’re been chased around – their dilemmas, trauma and their love for one another that rises above all the trials. Vikrant and Sanya make for a cute pair on screen.
The actors have picked up the nuances of their characters pretty well. They elevate the written material ably. The film thankfully does not digress into song-and-dance sequences or other such elements – it sticks to the tone that was set from the first frame. If anything, in a small way, it also tries to subtly equate same-sex relationships with inter-religious/inter-faith relationships and the end they also fear meeting with.
On the flipside, honour killings as a subject has been explored in myriad ways over the last few years in some extremely mainstream films, some of which have been notched better than this movie. Love Hostel does not go beyond telling us what we already know. This is the reason you start losing interest in the proceedings halfway through the runtime – you find things slowing down. Even the love story gradually starts losing grip on your emotions. It’s awkward to see a young child in the film being shown as a monstrous younger brother who beats his adult elder sisters for their supposed misdemeanours. The father, who is a loving and accommodating man, falls short while dealing with this menacing kid.
The way Bobby Deol walks in and out of different premises, committing murder after murder, almost makes it seem like his job is a walk in the park and there’s no one to stop him, quite literally. The police investigation vanishes from the film’s narrative after a point. No reason why. There are several such loopholes in the tightly-edited film. While the director has made an effort, to be honest with the material at hand, his co-writers and he have fallen really short in terms of putting together an engaging drama on paper that rises above telling us what’s already there on the internet.
